A while back I had a chance to talk with the nice people of Familon Oy about their recent changes in the organization and why their products are so highly praised among cruise ship passengers and hotel guests. Learn, what they had to say about the reasons for their success.

What are the latest news in Familon?

In 2014 there were a lot of changes in Familon. In July 2014 Trading House Scandinavia AB, one of the largest European bedding manufacturers, bought Familon including project sales unit. Familon Oy is now a subsidiary to Trading House Scandinavia. The brand name of project sales, changed from Finlayson Pro to Familon Pro. Familon is a very well-known brand in home textiles; pillows, duvets, mattresses and beds since 1966. Familon is a trusted company with certification for quality, environmental management, occupational health, and safety at work.

For those who are not specialists, why Familon’s products are the best in the industry?

Mattress Pad Master Safe 5 in SHIPSU Market

Since 1996, Familon’s pillows and duvets have been developed together with the Finnish Allergy and Asthma Federation and carry the Finnish Allergy Label. This label is awarded only to products that are safe for even the most sensitive of users. The Key Flag Symbol signifies that our products are made in Finland. The Oeko-Tex Standard 100 mark is testament to the safety of our textiles. Familon beds have also been awarded the Swan label, which is the official ecolabel for the Nordic countries. We’ve taken care of every detail to make drifting off to sleep a pure pleasure.

All Familon beds are made at our own factory in Heinola, Finland, using advanced technology and over 30 years of experience. The manufacturing process includes several stages that require skill and precision. The beds are upholstered and the covers are carefully hand sewn. Each spring is made from specialized carbon steel, which is thermally tempered during production for maximum durability. Familon mattresses and top mattresses are also manufactured and tested in Finland, from where we ship around 150,000 products to destinations around the world every year. The high-quality Familon Pro products are suitable for a range of settings from cruise ships, hotels, hospitals etc. Familon Pro products belonging to ignitability class SL 1 and bearing the wheel mark have received MED certification.

What do your customers think about your products?

Pillow Diivi Safe in SHIPSU Market

Familon is designed for the deepest sleep. Our wide selection of quality products includes pillows, duvets, mattresses and beds can be found in the best hotels in Scandinavia and cruise ships around the world. Our passion is well-being and promoting health. We are always proud to hear that people are satisfied with Familon products and have slept well.

Have you tried any Familon products in a hotel, a ship or at home? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Last week, there were rumors about the negotiations between the Finnish government, Meyer Werft and STX Finland being successfully finished. Today these rumors have been confirmed. The shipyard was bought with 70% of the shares acquired by Meyer and the rest by the Finnish government. In addition to the purchase of the shipyard, it also got 2 new orders from TUI Cruises.

Papenburg/Helsinki, 04 August 2014 – MEYER WERFT joins forces with the STX Finland shipyard in Turku. Following weeks of negotiations the Finnish Government and MEYER WERFT signed a share purchase agreement with the current owner STX Europe. With its 70% stake MEYER WERFT takes the industrial leadership of the new company.
At present some 1,300 employees and a specialised supplier network are involved in the construction of the cruise ship Mein Schiff 4 for the German cruise operator TUI Cruises from Hamburg. TUI Cruises just announced to order another two ships of this class in Turku. STX Finland is a specialist in the construction of cruise ships and a yard that holds exceptional technological know-how.

As Dr. Jan Meyer, managing partner of MEYER WERFT, explained, ” This acquisition will strengthen the yards in Papenburg, Turku and Rostock: With joining forces with Turku we can offer more flexibility to our customers. In addition both shipyards respect each other for their high level of professionalism and thus can learn a lot from each other in order to improve their working processes or to join forces on research & development.

We are confident that in this way we can create a good opportunity for the Finnish maritime cluster to thrive and also hope to interest many young people to join us for building the future high-tech ships.”
The acquisition is still subject to clearance by the antitrust authorities and banks. The plan is to rename the company STX Finland Oy to Meyer Turku Shipyard Oy.

QR codes are widely used in advertisement, whether it’s outside advertisement or product packaging. Even though we see QR codes as an advertisement support to get clients to go to a website with their mobile devices, we rarely remember that they were originally designed for industries.

But how could they be used in maritime industry? Well, the short answer is: aftersales. To give more insight here’s the long answer on how you are able to use these codes to do more aftersales and help the end buyers find product’s manufacturer by combining QR codes and SHIPSU Market.

Provider in SHIPSU, whether Lite or Premium, is able to add their products and services to the Market. From there they can take the needed link information and create a QR code, which can then be put to the products sold. When the Buyer feels the need to order a new piece of the same product, they can simply scan the code and find the product right away.

See, how easy it is to find products with QR code in just 30 seconds

and learn how to do it, from the Market with QR code in to two different sets of guides:

Follow this step by step guide on how to create and use QR codes to enable your end buyers to find you through your products and get aftersales through SHIPSU.

Step 1

Once you have inserted a product to the Market, you can open the product view and copy the URL from your web browser.

This method requires that the Buyer needs to join or sign up to SHIPSU (which in the case of end buyers is for free).

or

To avoid the sign up requirement and give little information directly from the QR, you can insert for example product code to the product page and search with that code and copy the URL from your browser, when you see the results page.

Step 2

Just copy the URL to a QR creator such at this one. (There are many more free QR creation tools online and many of them very good, you can choose the one of your liking.)

Generate the code.

Step 3

Print and attach to your product.

Now your buyer is able to find your company and product information from SHIPSU Market.

Even though marine industry and shipbuilding is a highly technical and engineering driven field, it still works with the same principles as other B2B and B2C industries, when it comes to selling and buying products and services.

Buyers are buying solutions, not products. These solutions just happen to come in the form of your products. The buyer might not know as much about the products you are selling or the best way to compare them with your competitor’s. This is why your company, when doing a bit more leg work to bring out the actual benefit to the customer, can benefit a lot.

Bringing out the benefit

One simple way of making your goods more desirable is to bring out, what exactly does the buyer benefit. Feature – Advantage – Benefit (FAB for short) model helps with this. The model works in any field of business. Here’s few examples from everyday life and marine industry. So which one sounds better? “Buy this car, it has a hybrid engine” or “Buy this car and you save money, when you use it” Very often the information given about a product is left to the Feature level, which is already good, but when selling benefits instead of features, you are providing solutions to the actual problem or need.

In the beginning of May, SHIPSU will enable payments via credit cards. In the beginning these payments are available for paying the subscriptions of Provider Premium and Buyer Regular. In the future additional services can also be paid with a credit card. Here’s few ways our users can benefit from using credit card instead of invoicing:

It’s faster.The chosen subscription type will be activated at the time that the payment for it has been made. Previously this has taken up to days or even weeks. With a credit card payments it will literally take only seconds.

It’s more secure. No more worrying about, if the bill has gotten paid or has it been lost in transportation. Now the user will be dealing directly with the credit card operator.

It’s more flexible. Paying for the subscription won’t be tied to being in the office to get the bill paid.

Credit card payment will be available to both old and new customers. The payment method change will not change the idea of Provider Premium being a fixed rate annually paid subscription with no extra charges.

Easily noticeable, if one has previously visited SHIPSU.com. We have introduced new visuals to it, following the principles of flat design. As the basics of flat design aims to achieve functionality and beauty through simplicity, it was also, what we wanted to achieve with the transformation.

SHIPSU is meant to be used as a tool, a bit more sophisticated hammer for nailing your sales, marketing and sourcing. We wanted to bring out, what it can actually do. So we decided to skip the spinning rims and the bright yellow paint and put one of the most important things on top – the search.

Now, when a buyer user comes to SHIPSU.com they can immediately search for providers’ products and services. Simplicity doesn’t mean that we have left something out. The Market is still as it was before as well as all of the help functions, tutorials and as you can see the blog. The road to the actual core is just shorter.

Here you can see the old meet the new version. Which one would you go for?

Recently, YLE News wrote an article that we found very encouraging within the SHIPSU staff. The news was about, how internet presence has helped a Finnish company receive a significant order from an Australian company.